Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a type of performance-based marketing in which a business rewards one or more affiliatesfor each visitor or customer brought by the affiliate’s own marketing efforts.Affiliate marketing overlaps with other Internet marketing methods to some degree, because affiliates often use regular advertising methods. Those methods include organic Search engine optimization (SEO), paid search engine marketing (PPC – Pay Per Click),e-mail marketing , content marketing, and (in some sense) display advertising. On the other hand, affiliates sometimes use less orthodox techniques, such as publishing reviews of products or services offered by a partner.Affiliate marketing is commonly confused with referral marketing, as both forms of marketing use third parties to drive sales to the retailer. The two forms of marketing are differentiated, however, in how they drive sales, where affiliate marketing relies purely on financial motivations, while referral marketing relies more on trust and personal relationshipsThe cost to the customer purchasing the product or service through an affiliate is the same as buying directly from the product owner.While product owners make less money per sale because they must pay a percentage of the sale to the affiliate, they are also reaching potential customers they probably wouldn’t reach on their own.Affiliates can earn commissions on a one-time purchase or recurring incomethrough sales of subscriptions or membership programs.Affiliates: Publishers like you and me who are using affiliate program links to promote and make sales. Affiliate marketplace: There are many marketplaces like Shareasale, CJ, and Clickbank. These work as central databases for affiliate programs in different niches.Affiliate software: Software used by companies to create an affiliate program for their product.Affiliate link: Special tracking link offered by your affiliate program to track the progress of your affiliate promotion.Affiliate ID: Similar to the affiliate link, but many affiliate programs offer a unique ID which you can add to any page of the product site.Payment mode: Different affiliate programs offer different methods of paymentAffiliate Manager/OPM: Many companies have dedicated affiliate managers to help publishers earn more by giving them optimization tips.Commission percentage/amount: The amount or percentage you will be receiving in affiliate income from every sale.2-tier affiliate marketing: This is a great way of making money from an affiliate program. With this method, you recommend that others join affiliate programs, and you receive a commission when a sub-affiliate makes a sale (similar to MLM or multi-level marketing). This income is also known as a sub-affiliate commission.Landing pages: A unique product sales or demo page used for the purpose of increasing sales. Most of the programs that you will be promoting have many landing pages, and you can run A/B testing to see which pages convert best for you.Custom affiliate income/account: Unlike a generic affiliate account, many companies offer custom affiliate income to people making the most affiliate sales for them.Link clocking: Most of the affiliate tracking links are ugly. Using a link clocking technique like URL shorteners, Thirsty Affiliates, etc., you can turn ugly links into links that can be read and understood by your readers.Custom coupons: Many programs allow affiliates to create custom coupons which are also used to track sales. Custom discount coupons help you to increase affiliate sales as well.